ABUSE

Mar 25 - Cardinal George Pell has called on the federal government to set up an independent body to recommend what damages should be paid to victims of child abuse, as he gave evidence to the child sexual abuse royal commission.

Mar 28 - In his last words at the child sex abuse Royal Commission, Cardinal George Pell apologised to the lawyer John Ellis for "the hurt caused him by the mistakes made, admitted by me and my Archdiocesan personnel".

Mar 29 - The now infamous case of the brilliant lawyer and sex abuse survivor John Ellis before the child sex abuse royal commission has laid bare for the first time not just the Sydney Catholic archdiocese's wealth but the cold, dark heart of its handling of child sex abuse complaints.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mar 25 - The National Gallery of Australia will continue to resist returning the Dancing Shiva statue it purchased for $US5 million from disgraced antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor in spite of damning evidence that it was stolen from an Indian temple and in the face of an official request for its return from India’s High Commission.

EDUCATION

Mar 26 - AUSTRALIAN Catholic University is accused of interfering with academic freedom after it pressured an editor to disassociate her journal from an earlier article that was deemed to hold views “contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church”.

Mar 27 - AUSTRALIAN Catholic University has defended itself over allegations of interference in academic freedom saying it was just trying to give primary school teachers guidance when it demanded a note be placed in a scholarly journal, against the editor’s wishes.

INTERNATIONAL STORIES

Abuse

Mar 28 - IN a rare legal move, a Roman Catholic diocese in Minnesota is suing a diocese in Ireland, alleging it transferred a priest to Minnesota without warning that the man had been accused of sexual abuse.

Other

Mar 25 - Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who designed Christchurch's "Cardboard Cathedral" in the wake of the city’s devastating 2011 earthquake, has won the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize, often described as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

JUDAISM

Mar 28 - A WESTERN Sydney imam believes the Abbott government’s proposed repeal of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act will create a situation that favours Jews and discriminates against indigenous Australians and other minority groups.

POLITICS

Mar 26 - GEORGE Brandis insists Holocaust denial will be unlawful under his proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, as the draft legislation was savaged by Tony Abbott’s chief indigenous adviser, Warren Mundine.